Expand your horizons with summer enrichment classes

This summer, take a break from the beach and head to the classroom. But we're not talking calculus or world history. When the sun gets too hot, learning a new skill is more than cool, it can open new worlds, develop confidence and even lead to a healthier life.

Calling all future filmmakers, glass blowers, Italophiles and Martha Stewart wannabes

"When opening the gallery in the arts district we wanted to offer lifestyle classes as well as painting, drawing and mosaics," says Anna Russo–Sieber, owner of Anna Russo–Sieber Gallery Studio Classes (ARS) in Benton Harbor, Michigan's burgeoning arts district. "We teach classes in Italian, wine education and one called the Art of Entertaining, where we teach tablescape ideas and how to pair food and wine."

Though kids might eschew learning how to pick the perfect red to go with grilled pork chops, tapping into their inner auteur is another option. "It's a chance for students to create a story with a beginning, middle and end," Russo-Sieber says about her filmmaking camp. "It also allows them to learn directing, editing and creating stage design."

Other kids' camps at ARS focus on Italian art such as ceramics, mosaics, reliefs and painting, along with learning a few Italian phrases.

Russo–Sieber has also partnered with Water Street Glassworks, just a block away, a hot glass studio where young camp goers learn the technique of creating glass objects.

A hot craft

Housed in a sleekly remodeled historic building in Benton Harbor's energized and emerging arts district, Water Street Glassworks offers glass-making classes and demonstrations and tours that take visitors on a catwalk above the hot shop. Founded by artist Jerry Catania and his wife Kathy, Water Street Glassworks (so named because it's on the corner of Water, Territorial and Hinckley Streets) also is home to Fired Up!, an after-school program for Benton Harbor students with scholarships funded from the sales of artisan gelato and ice cream at the adjoining Water Street Gelatoworks.

Both places are housed in the Hinckley building, built in 1898, a wonderful brick building that had been abandoned and was near ruin when the Catanias bought it 12 years ago to restore and use for their gallery and school. Classes include stained glass making, glass blowing, fusion and casting, bead and metal working and creating glass mosaics. Next door, the Gelatoworks serves traditional flavors of ice cream and gelato as well as a variety of such exotics as rose, lavender and honey and raspberry double chocolate swirl.

The Sounds of Music

The Citadel Dance and Music Center, also in the Benton Harbor Arts District and housed in a wonderfully renovated 1922 ice cream factory, is a delightful spot to take a lesson or two. Much of the interior space has been repurposed to maintain its architectural integrity and also be functional with the original concrete ceilings, windows and brick walls, a wood freezer door from the ice cream factory now the entrance to the common space, a telegraph yardarm functioning as a coat rack with glass insulators subbing as hooks and a vintage scale from the owner's family business. There is a whole list of classes in music and dance for beginners to advanced learners, including Kindermusik Summer Camp, Improvisation, and private music lessons, which are available all summer.

"It's not unusual for people from Chicago who are staying here in the summer to take a lesson or two," says Susan Dietrich–Reed, Citadel's director of music. "It's a great way to make summer vacation educational and productive as well as fun."

Preserving Nature's Bounty

Food preservation is all the rage as we trend to local and plant our own home gardens. So this summer, as vegetables ripen and farm stands overflow with wonderful offerings, learn how to safely put food up for winter.

You can go for the boot camp of sorts by enrolling in the 30–hour, 5–day Home Food Preservation courses through Purdue Cooperative Extension Service in Crown Point, taught by Corinne Powell, extension educator of consumer and family sciences at Purdue Cooperative Extension Service. The sessions include hot water canning, brining, making jams and jellies, freezing and using a pressure canner.

"I decided that after I retired I would take classes that would help me eat healthier," says Kathy Horvath of Highland, who completed the food preservation course at the extension. "By canning and freezing food, I can come home after a busy day and make a quick, healthy meal."

Or you can opt instead for a class taught by Joe Gaal—the executive chef at Grand Kankakee Hunt Club in Hanna, Illinois—at the Regal Rabbit in Chesterton. In this two-hour class, Gaal focuses on making vinegar brines to put over raw vegetables such as dill pickles and a hot brine for vegetables that need to be blanched before pickling, like cauliflower and green beans.

The Culinary Arts

The Regal Rabbit is also the place to upgrade cooking skills with a roster of classes that during the summer include grilling and using fresh, local produce to create healthy and delicious meals.

Cooking classes at Perennial Accents' Culinary Kitchen in St. Joseph, Michigan, taught by local culinary professionals and talented home chefs, take place in the store's KitchenAid-designed teaching area, where students have observed demonstrations of dishes such as rabbit rillette (preparation of meat similar to pate—used as a spread on bread) with grain mustard, cornishons and warm baguette, grilled hangar steak frites and Belgium chocolate cake with tangerine marmalade and cardamom cream. And yes, there are samples.

The School of Cooking at the newly opened Martin's Supermarket in Stevensville, Michigan, also features local chefs in such classes as "Small Plates with Big Flavor!"—a tapas making class taught by Nick Natale, executive chef at Rockwell's Republic in Grand Rapids—and Rob Elliott of Bit of Swiss, an award-winning bakery, showing how to make trendy cake pops in the "Crazy for Cake Pops!" class.

Get Wet

Who would have thought that the cry of "Surfs up!" would resonate on the west coast of Michigan? But here in New Buffalo and St. Joseph, Third Coast Surf Shop offers individual and group surfing lessons as well as instruction in SUP or Standup Paddleboarding (think a combination of kayaking and surfing), skimboarding (think small surfboard) and sandboarding—surfing the dunes instead of the waves.

Third Coast also offers three-day Beach Camps for kids ages 8 to 12 with activities including surfing, boogie boarding, sandboarding and skimboarding, sand castle building and soccer.

Les Corkill, a certified dive instructor and owner of Diver's Lair in Valparaiso, offers a plethora of classes including Discover Scuba Diving, a 90-minute class for those who've never experienced this underwater sport and want a brief introduction, which includes safety instruction and underwater time in scuba gear at the Valparaiso YMCA. He also offers all level of certification classes for ages 10 and older.

"We support the marine biology or biology courses at Valparaiso, Munster, Crown Point and Chesterton High Schools providing Open Water Diver and Advance Open Water Diver training used by more than 100 students each year," says Corkill, who also trains Boy Scouts in support of their new Scuba Diving Merit Badge. "After they are trained, the kids go to the Marine Bio-lab in the Keys and do scientific studies."

Bridget Muntzing, a senior at Valparaiso High School, completed both courses at her school. "We got the opportunity to dive at some great places like the Marine Lab in Key Largo," she says. "Next, I'm going to take a rescue diver certification course with Les."

Learn to sail the seas (or at least Lake Michigan) by signing up for Basic Sailing 101, a week-long class at Chicago Sail that starts every Monday during the summer. More advanced classes include Spinnakers and Speed 211 and Coastal Navigation and Piloting.

For many summers, when Liam Kinney and his sister Riley returned to their summer home in Benton Harbor, the two took sailing classes at the St. Joseph Junior Foundation, learning to navigate small boats in the harbor and out on Lake Michigan.

"It was a great way to spend the summer," says Liam, now entering his senior year at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. "We learned how to sail and more fun, we sometimes got to tip them over on purpose and we learned how to deal with that, too."

Get Moving

The South Shore Dance Alliance at the South Shore Center for the Arts in Miller Beach is offering one-week introductory classes in basic dance techniques including ballet, jazz and hip-hop for children ages 4 to 9.

Saddle up at Four Seasons Equestrian Center in Crown Point, Indiana, for a four–day Pony Camp (ages 4 to 9) or Horse Camp (ages 10 to 16).

"Students ride for two hours in our indoor riding arena," says owner Virginia Fox, "and they also learn how to saddle, groom and care for a horse as well as do crafts."

On the final afternoon, the newly minted equestrians put on a show for Mom and Dad.

Go international at the Valparaiso Family YMCA, when English coaches return for another high level Challenger Sports British Soccer Camp for kids. The Y is also offering an Aquatic Exploration Camp, where campers learn water and boating safety, SCUBA and marine/aquatic conservation.

The Great Outdoors

Look to the stars at the 6th Annual Youth Astronomy Camp at the Conway Observatory at Buckley Homestead County Park, an 1850s pioneer farm. During the camp, volunteers from the Calumet Astronomical Society as well as astronomy professors from Purdue University Calumet teach campers how to take astrophotographs, use the Conway telescope to look at planets and constellations, learn how to map a star chart and visit the planetarium.

The 131–acre Gibson Woods Nature Preserve is hosting "Water—Our Most Renewable Resource" at their Nature Discovery Camp, a hands-on camp designed to increase knowledge about water, including what lives in it, the causes and effects of pollution and how to prevent it.